Tom Waits muxtape

OK, here's a new muxtape, which features exclusively Tom Waits songs that turn my crank.
Or activate my trapeze artist. Or invert my disguise. Or pass my stones. Or sugar-free my jazz. Or Bugs my Potter. Or smoke my Jim Rodriguez. Or doctor my Chung. Or... nevermind...

Give it a listen: Catfish Vegas's Favorite Tom Waits Songs Muxtape!

Waits' PEHDTSCHJMBA underway

(Photo: Joe Odea, Pitchforkmedia.com)

All that separates me from Tom Waits now is a night of sleep, several hundred miles of scorching hot desert and whatever line there is to get into El Paso's Plaza Theatre.

With the tour underway, I feel properly immersed in Waits' tunes, tales and mythology to really go nuts at the show. Sure it's a shame that our own Fox Theatre in Tucson didn't get booked for this tour, but it's an absolute blessing to have a chance at all to see the man.

The reviews — uniformly glowing — are rolling in for the first night of this Glitter & Doom Tour:
Los Angeles Times
Arizona Republic
Phoenix New Times
Rolling Stone
Associated Press
LA Weekly
Pitchfork
IckMusic

I'll be back with a review of my own, but in the meantime, here's a tremendous live Waits performance from Tucson, in 1975, broadcast on KWFM. (Pay close attention to his story/poem about being hustled in 9-ball.)

DOWNLOAD:
Tom Waits - Rosie (live KWFM Tucson, 1975)
Tom Waits - Ol' 55 (live KWFM Tucson, 1975)
Live From Lee Furr's Studio - KWFM Tucson 1975 (zip file)

The Mule Introduction

If Tom Waits hadn't released the stunning and remarkably varied Mule Variations in 1999, I don't think I would have ever found myself exploring his music so deeply, or ever found so many of the off-beat treasures and poetic screwball truths that flowed out like an unexpected drip from his rough growl of a voice and beatnik shuffle tunes. I'd be missing several favorite songs, I'd have likely bypassed all but his most obvious musical moments. I'd be left wondering what the big deal was when I heard his name. And I'd certainly have a clear head today, not lost in the anticipation of watching the man perform in El Paso on Friday.

Sometimes albums are released at the absolute perfect time in your life, when they can smack you in the face and shake up everything you thought you knew about music. They alter what you want from a song - deliver meaning when you wanted a beat, substitute truth for a good melody, or leave you staring at the horizon in confusion just a second after you thought you might be close to grasping what it all mean.

The most powerful albums in my life have almost always been the ones I caught on to when they were fresh, those new musical artifacts you get to ride as if they were waves, right at the same time everyone else in the world is listening. The new is what captivates the most. The new is what makes you feel like you're worthy of walking the hippest razor's edge you can find. The new is the powerful.

And Mule Variations is Waits returning with a new studio album after seven years. His 16th record was lagging a bit considering it was his 16th in 26 years, but as an established musician and cult favorite it really wasn't that long. So consider this as a comparison: Mule Variations was released the week I turned 20, more or less a good ways down my road to being a savvy music fan. But as a 13-year-old barely able to wrap his head around the emerging grunge trend, I wouldn't have had the slightest clue what to do with an album like Bone Machine.

But I was more-or-less equipped mentally to take in Mule Variations. And friends from all walks seemed to be finding it and sharing it in one big soupy mix of exploration. I was finding that folks who called their favorite bands Radiohead, Bob Dylan, B.B. King, the Magnetic Fields, Wilco, Bad Religion, Johnny Cash and Beck were all coming together over this new Tom Waits record. The agreement was notable enough in itself, but the fervor with which I was watching various friends recommend this new album was what drove me to join the club.

I was most immediately drawn to the ballads: "Hold On" is permanently the list of my five favorite songs - and "House Where Nobody Lives," "Pony" and "Picture in a Frame" were all immediate touchstones on that album. That reaction is fitting because as I've continued to dive into the man's intense and dense catalog for the last nine years (digging both proper albums and a good number of bootlegs), that early folk-jazz period is what I find most captivating. But Mule Variations is far from a pretty or precious album. Waits' ramshackle rythymic witchery just may be at the highest level he ever reached.

After all these years, what I like most about the album is how it makes such a strong statement in favor of all the different paths his career has taken over nearly 30 years. Mule Variations represents everything that Tom Waits does well - from the heart-broken troubadour stuff to his so-called junkyard orchestra. He's a madman and an oracle, running through 16 songs, half of which you could dance to with your grandmother and half of which make you shake with fear.

I'm sure 99 percent of the people who ever wrote a song would rest their heads with pride and glory to have Mule Variations as a greatest hits collection. And the record could certainly stand as a greatest hits for Waits, if anyone is reductive enough to take it as such. It's certainly one of my all-time top 10 albums, but more than that, it was a springboard for me into a fascinating and rewarding catalog of albums that I'll almost certainly continue absorbing over decades rather than years.

And I can't say enough great things about the VH1 Storytellers show Waits performed in connection with the Mule Variations release. It is without a doubt among the top handful of concert recordings I have ever heard. The songs, the stories, the overall performance and the recording quality are all A+ material. So give it a few good listens, and let's all just thank the man for writing and singing songs for all these years...

DOWNLOAD:
Tom Waits - Picture in a Frame (live Storytellers)
Tom Waits - VH1 Storytellers 1999 (zip file)

Two young men and two old men

I'm fascinated by watching these Tom Waits interviews with David Letterman, with various available clips spanning 20 years. They both look like they're having loads of fun whenever they get together. Hell, you could put together a nightly show with just the two of them (it'd be funny enough, but of course it would ruin the mystery Waits has built up over the years).

Throughout, there's this sort of comfortable charm between the two. Letterman plays the straight man, patiently goading Waits into answers he knows will be ludicrous. But Letterman obviously knows how much he's being put on and doesn't even try to conceal how funny he thinks the whole thing is. And Waits is just bursting to let loose with ridiculous answers and strange yarns. It's really an act more than an interview.

Taken together, these clips form an insightful and compelling overview of Waits' music and persona. He's at turns rough and wise, a jester and a showman, and all along Letterman keeps poking around for something weirder and funnier from his guest. I'm sure they know each other fairly well by now and I don't doubt that private conversations are any less hilarious.

First up is a 1983 interview, with Waits pushing Frank's Wild Years:



Next is Rain Dogs era Waits, in 1986:



"Straight from the Top," in 1988, and another top-notch interview:



And next we'll jump forward to 2002, with Waits playing "All the World is Green" on his promo push for Alice and Blood Money:



And then we reach the near-present, with Tom visiting Dave once again, in 2006:



DOWNLOAD:
Tom Waits - A Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis (live Austin City Limits, 1978)

"Tom, you project a very strange image..."

Welcome to Tom Waits Week here at Catfish Vegas Presents...

Until Friday we'll be celebrating and sharing the music and stories of the great and truly singular American icon Tom Waits. And then on Friday, it's off to El Paso to see the man himself in concert. Two Phoenix shows sold out in something like eight minutes (and tickets on Craigslist are going for something like $500 a pair), but apparently the LA crowd isn't willing to cruise the extra few hours down I-10. I was shocked a couple weeks ago when some friends said tickets were still available, but I got to it and ordered a pair myself.

And I've certainly been preparing, listening non-stop to Tom Waits. And while I had no doubt that his recording career was rich and varied enough to support this sort of extended immersion, the breadth of excellence is truly astonishing. The volume of top quality songs and albums recorded by Waits puts him in a league with probably just Dylan, Springsteen and Neil Young. And his personality dwarfs all those other fellers in terms of how captivating he is as a sheer character.

The quote leading off this post is from an appearance Waits did on The Mike Douglas Show in November 1976. Douglas introduces Waits as a "combination of a poet, jazz singer and vagrant, with a surprising amount of personal charm."

I'm about halfway through Jay S. Jacobs marvelous biography "Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits," and Jacobs describes how shocking Waits was to the television folks: first Waits missed out on rehearsing because the security guard refused to let him into the building, then Douglas himself nearly freaked out when he found a "homeless" guy asleep on the green room couch.

After playing "Eggs and Sausage," Waits sat in for a typically mystifying interview, telling Douglas that he's "an unemployed service-station attendant" and he "just talk(s) this way on the weekends." Check out the clip:



And here's an August 1977 Waits appearance on Fernwood Tonight, with "The Piano Has Been Drinking" and another curveball interview:



DOWNLOAD:
Tom Waits - Eggs and Sausage (live KQRS, Minneapolis, Dec. 16, 1975)
Tom Waits - The Piano Has Been Drinking (live WNEW New York, Dec. 14, 1976)

Stay tuned all week for more Tom Waits...

The Lost Dutchman Tapes

I had this notion a while back to write a story or screenplay or something about an imagined future for Kurt Cobain, a skewed and new reality in which he decided to just hide out for a while instead of ending it all. This future takes his anguish and dries it out, puts Kurt in a radically different environment as embarks on a new pursuit of his songcraft and through it, a new life...

Picture it as sort of like Kurt finding his Woodstock, with the Meat Puppets playing the Band to his Dylan. Kurt gets off tour feeling like the world is closing in on him and gets into (or fakes) a motorcycle accident. From there he takes off to the Arizona desert, living on some hidden ranch somewhere with the Kirkwood brothers and spending months making fractured sun-soaked country music and experimenting with a whole new way of storytelling.

They make tape loops of psychedelic and grating sounds all day and sit around campfires at night, strumming guitars as though they'd been taught a new sacrament, staring up as the smoke curled its way up into the dry night sky.

Kurt would fall in love again with music, and find a new sense of purpose with a fellow band of one-time punkers who saw their music branch out into crazy directions. They'd probably get their hands on some peyote and make up dusty blues songs with alien lyrics.

Maybe Kurt would take road trips and long walks through the desert with Roger Clyne, buying blankets and tequila from Mexican children after crossing south of the border. They'd talk of death and struggle and the suffocation of fame, as it grew from fleeting to incessant. But it would all be in the abstract because they were out there, in the hinterlands, away from any pressure to perform and to respond to countless demands, or to do anything else but simply breathe.

Maybe Kurt could've taken his exodus from fame in time to meet up with Doug Hopkins, and just maybe the two wildly different but wildly talented songwriters could've found some common inspiration, maybe a sort of rivalry as they pushed each other to come up with better and better songs, everyone else be damned.

All the while there'd be new songs - conquistador ballads, lonesome cowboy tunes, mythologically based inquiries into modern life, an intensely personal examination of life on the road as the spokesman of a generation. A sun-baked madness and a calming wisdom would emerge as two competing forces in his lyrics. Always an abstract writer, Cobain could have found a new plane for his contemplations. He could have forced an entirely different worldview into his head, turning out songs while he was awake that would seem to have sprung from the soundest depths of sleep.

Some fans might get wind of all this of course, and make ill-fated pilgrimages to try and drag Kurt back to Seattle, back to the limelight. Geffen would call and call and call. The inevitable bootlegs would leak out after a time, coveted because the quiet and shaky tapes would come out like a previously unimagined form of salvation. But those "Lost" Cobain tapes would seem so unlikely that they'd be questioned at every turn. No definitive answer would emerge.

But they'd pave the way for Kurt's return, for a new sort of "tour," with a ramshackle posse of long-haired musicians taking a stage coach from town to forgotten town, arriving unannounced at sundown to light a campfire and pass a bottle of tequila before dusting off guitars and starting in on several hours of mind-blowing songs. These unexpected and hard-to-believe performances would become legendary. Fans would leave Seattle and Los Angeles for Benson and Jerome, taking ouija vacations trying to predict where the troupe would emerge next.

At long last a proper release would be put together, recorded during a performance at Gammage, with a rotating cast of musicians reveling in the anonymity of a completely dark theater. The only certainty would be that Kurt was at the center of it all, singing for an audience once again, singing his desert songs, joyous in the culmination his restful phase and ready to find a new muse to chase.


These musings have been brought to you by the stunning and excellent Meat Puppets Live Repository. There are more than 30 full live shows there, dating from 1981 clear through to the band's reunion in 2007.

DOWNLOAD:
Meat Puppets - Plateau (live Whiskers, Phoenix, Aug. 19, 1983)
Meat Puppets - Lake of Fire (live Warfield, San Francisco, Aug. 7, 1991)
Meat Puppets - Backwater (live Slims, San Francisco, April 18, 1993)
Meat Puppets - Comin' Down (live Austin, June 1, 2007)

Plush Grizzle and Chuck Norris

Catfish Vegas favorite SumKid Majere has come out with one hell of an mixtape, "Plush Grizzle." It's no surprise that he throws together jazz, blues, hip-hop and rock and makes it all flow.

His style as an MC is a mish-mash of the sounds of his various stomping grounds, Chicago Atlanta, North Carolina, Los Angeles and New York styles. He's informed and influenced by too much to pin down easily, but aside from stylistic origins, there's no doubt that Sum is one of the master lyricists of hip-hop today, who can handle utterly fascinating and detailed imagery just as well an absurd stream-of-consciousness flow.

He's also got plenty more in the works for this year - sign up for Sum's mailing list at ReverbNation.

In the meantime, check out the video for "Sloth," from his Batmilk EP:


DOWNLOAD:
SumKid - Chuck Norris On Drugs
SumKid - September

Free Suicide Kings download; Calexico in Space

Phoenix's ornery honky-tonk heroes The Suicide Kings have relocated to Nashville, home of their record label, Blue Plate Music, as they ready their newest album.

Set for an August release, the record is streaming on the band's Web site (or just listen below), and what's more, sign up for their mailing list and you'll get an email link for a free download of the song "Bottle and a Gun."



I'd been a fan of the band (formerly the Revenants) for years, but never got to see them play live until March, and it was a hell of a show.

---------------

Next up is news that Calexico is going into space. Not Joey and John and the rest, that takes training and whatnot. But their music, specifically "Crystal Frontier," will be played as the astronaut's wake up Friday. Apparently Cmdr. Mark Kelly is a big fan and selected the song.

DOWNLOAD:
Calexico - Crystal Frontier (from Even My Sure Things Fall Through)

New James on the way

James, the blokes responsible for one of my all-time favorite albums, are back, seven years after a split that nearly consigned the band to being all-but-forgotten. Big in England, the band had the misfortune to chart just one song in the U.S., which in the attention deficit of this country's pop culture means you're a one-hit wonder, regardless of the quality of the rest of your music.

Of course, "Laid" was one hell of a single and definitely earned the band plenty of curious American fans (yours truly), but for some reason the American music public in general just stopped there. And subsequently missed out on a damn good thing.

The Laid album was a staple of mine from nearly the time it came out in 1993 clear through most of my college years, a span of eight or so years. Few albums have ever come along with such fortunate timing to really mean something in my life, and that brooding masterpiece of alternative rock was one of my cornerstones. I always loved the lyrics especially - James was a band that was daring me to figure myself out, with words and clues throw out along the way and a certain yearning sound that always felt like a part of the search in itself.

I don't think James ever quite fit with the Manchester scene they came up in - they never were as dance-oriented or as punk-inspired as the bigger Manchester bands (hence no Brooklyn-based rip-off/revival movement these days). Brian Eno produced Laid and while the record certainly carries his touch, it's neither as experimental as his own work or as polished as his U2 production. What he did was let James be James, and the band always relied on an intricate instrumental base, letting acoustic guitars and well-placed horns have their place in alt.rock.

News of the band's return a few months back caught me by surprise and frankly had me listening to Laid straight through for the first time in years. And it holds up, my friends, it really does.

Hey Ma has already been released in the UK, but the U.S. release date isn't until September for some reason. Until then, check out the tunes on the band's MySpace, or the KCRW set they performed last week:



It's clear from this preview that James has emerged on this side of the seven-year hiatus with the band's signature sound intact, a melodic and atmospheric swirl, anchored by Tim Booth's soaring and passionate vocals. The new songs are fantastic, just the right mood for this 2008 that we're living.

(An aside just gleaned from wikipedia: Booth played Victor Zsasz in Batman Begins and is apparently returning in The Dark Knight. I had no idea.)

DOWNLOAD:
James - Hey Ma (live KCRW)

Get the whole set (six songs, plus interviews) as a zip file.

Synchronicity

After finishing the last post, I zapped on the tube for a little relaxation, and flipped back and forth between a Pete Seeger biography on PBS and and rerun episode of The Shield.

What's funny is that X falls somewhere in the middle of all that - a legendary folk singer who's spent most of a century writing and singing about and organizing the underclass, and a contemporary television show about the gritty criminal underground of Los Angeles...

It seems like X is a product of all that... or should at least acknowledge its place in the whole schebang.

Here are a couple of loose threads that have been on my mind since the last post:
First is an absolutely spellbinding story about John Doe and his roots as a poet in Baltimore.
Next up is my own take on X's country counterpart band, The Knitters:

It’s true and good and right. And the punk shown through. The punk will always show through and always has. Until the 1970s, it simply went by different names and came from different places. It was Woody and the Carters, it was Charlie Mingus, it was boogie brothel piano and Robert Johnson’s devil guitar.

What X put on stage in Los Angeles in the early 1980s and what the Knitters put on the stage last night is proof it’s all the damn same. The Knitters did turns on Woody’s “Do Re Mi” and the Stanley Brothers “Rank Stranger,” as well as the X screamer “Burning House of Love” and the Knitters fave “Call of the Wreckin’ Ball.”

It’s the America that fell beneath the cracks and is better for it. It’s the America of Woody and Ray Charles and Johnny Cash. It’s the outlaws and the righteous, but more accurately and most importantly, it’s the America that denies and abhors the power structure. It’s the America that doesn’t want the Machine of oilmen and bankers and war-mongers. It’s the America of Hunter S. Thompson and Edward Abbey.

Damn. Feisty shite there. I kinda rule.

DOWNLOAD:
Dave Alvin - Fourth of July (live, 2007-10-07, Golden Gate Park, S.F.)

Live: X

"Reunion" shows are typically transparent attempts to cash in on the money-to-spare, now-that-the-kids-are-gone Boomers who once made up what may well have been a fairly intense fan base at one time.

And then there's X, a band that gave the American West its own form of punk rock - and while the region may have been slightly late in developing compared to the British and New York scenes, it was one that, spurred by X, ultimately became richer musically, with its nods to rock 'n' roll rootsiness and a greater sense of the poetry that could be conveyed alongside churning and screaming electric guitars.

X was never just three chords, never a band that could've been pinned down as anarchist instigator wannabes, and never a band that stopped innovating. And though I was somewhat prepared for the stage presence and general excellence of X by a Knitters show I saw almost three years ago, this was my first time seeing the band itself. So, though I'm not typically a front-and-center type of show-goer (at least once the crowds climb past 1,000), I wasn't going to take any other position for this one. There was going to be no action-figure-sized musicians in my recollections of the night, no back-of-the-hall timidness to mar my evening.

The quick review? Incredible, bad-ass, inspirational and memorable, not only because I finally got to engage a long-time favorite band close up, but also because those incredible songs just kept coming, and as my eyes kept scanning their way across the stage's four outstanding and iconic musicians and I kept jumping up and down, I felt as though I could've been there at the beginning, that I was stuck in some sweaty and dingy LA club back in the day, that it wasn't 30 years after the music was burning-white-hot new shit. The furthest thing from a nostalgia show is one that convinces those who were never around the scene to begin with that they just might've been. Had I not been an infant in those days, I would've belonged, that's for sure.

And X delivered. The freshness and the energy the band brought to the Rialto Theatre Saturday - the final night of the band's 31st anniversary tour - was so clear, and so clearly dependent on each of the four band members, that it could've lit the marquee itself. Those four reunited punks have emerged three decades later as legends for no other reason than they are legendary:

Exene Cervenka simply has the most commanding presence of any woman ever to front a punk band - fierce and menacing on the microphone, with a confident sass that she's built up over 30 years on stage. As I wrote about the Knitters, Exene's and John Doe's vocals just meld into this otherwordly thing altogether, a synchronized wail that slowly becomes its own singular creature, born to breathe fire and shout heartache.

At 54, John Doe looks as if he was born to live in this sort of extended middle age. A few wrinkles only make his face all the more expressive, and hint at a backstreets wisdom that's precisely in line with the sound and style of music he plays, particularly the loud thump-and-wail of X, but also the weary troubadour country- and folk-tinged songs he churns out solo. No wonder he's an actor. Dressed all in black at the show, Doe is the archetype outsider, a rebel intellectual who found his home in punk rock. But in other eras of American life he would've been a beat poet, a James Dean, a drinking buddy of Hemingway, a rail-car compatriot of Guthrie, or a pen-pal of Mark Twain.

Billy Zoom engages the audience more than any performer I've ever seen, and all without a microphone. He's the king of eye contact. With his lightning fast punkified Chuck Berry guitar riffs coming from muscle memory, Zoom was constantly scanning the crowd for any camera or camera phone pointed his way, and he'd just mug away, eyebrows bouncing up and down as he zeroed in on each fan. Dipping his guitar neck for the front few rows of people to touch and constantly smiling and winking (I think he got me four times), Zoom must've personally connected with hundreds of people in the crowd - stretch that tally night after night across the whole tour and there are thousands of X fans, some old but most young, with the smiling and slightly wrinkled face of Zoom forever etched in memory, a silver pompadour combed high and a personalized guitar strap signifying not only celebrity but legend. Billy Zoom is practically ready to run for office.

Zoom brings an effortless virtuosity to the band, and D.J. Bonebrake is an equally gifted musician on the drums, a dynamic powerhouse and one of punk's standout rhythm-men. Perhaps the most appropriately named musician ever to walk this Earth, D.J. Bonebrake still comes across on stage as a teenager having the time of his life. It wasn't until he took off his pork-pie hat midway through the set that it was clear his hair is white, rather than just the typical bleached look of punks.

(And now a bit of a break to complain about the annoyance of moshing, which assaulted me countless times during the show and turned my attention from the band during some of their best songs.)

I never liked moshing when I was 16, either as a participant the couple half-assed tries I gave it or as the more sane crowd member who didn't join in. And I've only grown more curmudgeonly about the senselessly assaultive practice since those days of my early punk shows. If rumblers wanted to rumble with rumblers at shows that would be one thing, but moshing takes no pains to avoid the non-participants, most of whom have turned their backs to the pit to actually watch the band, and are rewarded by incessant shoving that comes close to whiplash each time. Few things can be more distracting than literally having to defend yourself from being pummeled. Moshing is meat-headed and jockish at its core, something that in my mind never really fit in with the music, especially for a band as intelligent and reverential of its forefathers as X is.

(And now back to focusing on the music, as I was mostly able to do at the show once security booted the most grievous instigator, some rough and dread-locked chick who looked like she was out for nothing more than a fight.)

X holds a truly crucial place in the canon of American rock music. The band is rightly understood as one of the lynchpins, one of the bridges between styles and generations that - along with the Beach-Boys-loving Ramones - made punk fit, made this left-field energy and amped-to-11 sound seem like something Elvis would've been into if he'd only come along 20 years later, raised in a faltering inner-city instead of the rural South.

Punk was less a rebellion against anything in particular than a back-to-basics approach that reconnected with what made rock 'n' roll what it was in the first place. Punk rendered rock 'n' roll relevant again - it was a bunch of disaffected youths harnessing the power of the amplified guitar and the kick-and-snare backbeat. And if early rock 'n' roll was a response to the repressive Eisenhower years, punk rock returned again to turn American society on its head during the Carter and Reagan era.

While X is a band that didn't record minor works, the group's debut Los Angeles remains its best work and there's no denying that on the final night of the 31st anniversary tour. Seven of the albums nine songs made the set list and they were more often than not the ones that sent energy pulsing through the crowd. X was a band that landed fully formed, with Los Angeles as the template for its uniquely rootsy punk sound that chronicled dirty LA and the lovelorn rebel life as they lived it. The next three records to follow were all outstanding, but for its immediacy, its rawness and the dedicated following it spawned, Los Angeles is really what was being celebrated on this tour.

I realize that I've written as much about the band in general as I have the show in particular. But that's simply because, during the course of the show, I just kinda felt X in its entirety. The live performance is so well-honed, and the band's catalogue so impressive, that to be in an X show is to literally be embracing the band for all that it has accomplished in 31 years. I was born too late to be there for so much of the music that I love, and while I have no hesitation in catching a band well-passed its prime, that just can't be said for X. Not for this tour. X plays with fire every night, and as I could see from my front-and-center position, they're legends who inspire everybody, including the excellent openers Detroit Cobras, who spent the night jumping and dancing and generally rocking out in the wings like they were star-struck fans instead of tour mates who'd been there night after night.

DOWNLOAD:
X - The World's A Mess, It's In My Kiss (live 2008-05-27, Cat's Cradle, Carrboro, N.C.)

BONUS DOWNLOAD:
X - Positively Fourth Street (live, Bob Dylan cover, 8-2-1986, The Ritz, New York City)

In which Catfish starts thinking about ways to be in two places at once...

Since complaining about having too much great stuff to do on a Friday night is a pretty low-class move, I'll leave the complaining out of it and just say this: I'm having a dickens of a time trying to choose between the rock and soul confection of The Bellrays and perennial Catfish Vegas favorites Chango Malo on one side and a stacked local bill celebrating a new KXCI Locals Only album, as well as bidding farewell to founder Don Jennings and his incredible 10 years hosting the program.

The trump card might just end up being the fact that the Bellrays are the only out-of-town band in the mix. And though I've technically seen the Bellrays, that was just as a vocal-and-guitar duo during last year's HoCo Festival after the apparent abrupt departure of the rest of the band. And that was amazing, really highlighting what singer Lisa Kekaula can belt out, but from what I've been told, the full band sound has that beat to a pulp.

Still, the combination of at Plush, with Golden Boots, The Deludes, The Swim and others is downright delicious. And the farewell to Don Jennings is compelling too...

My guess is I'll end up trying to rush back and forth between the two clubs, to at least make a righteous attempt at hearing it all.

DOWNLOAD:
The Bellrays - Infection
Chango Malo - Superstition (Stevie Wonder cover)
Golden Boots - Beginnings of Modern Astronomy
The Swim - Margaret With Comets
The Deludes - Production Line

The top of the heap

Occasionally an artist will catch you by storm, and you'll quickly go from never having heard a song to counting your new favorite among your all-time favorites. It's like a damn good infection.

And the latest one we're dealing with around these parts is Kathleen Edwards. I wisely took a chance on seeing Edwards and her killer band at Club Congress a few weeks back. Then on a vacation to San Francisco I caught her again just a few days later. And I'm hooked.

She's an incredible performer, a talented songwriter and definitely has the potential to be considered legendary somewhere on down the line. Edwards can rock your ass off just as easily as she can break your heart.

One thing is absolutely for sure: "I Make The Dough, You Get The Glory" has rocketed up to the top of my list for the next mix (and rest assured, I take these things seriously). This is easily one of the best songs I've heard all year. So I was thrilled to come across a live radio performance Edwards gave just last month.

DOWNLOAD:
Kathleen Edwards - I Make The Dough, You Get The Glory (live World Cafe)
Get the whole set as a zip file.

New Calexico on the way

I ran into a feller at lunch today who dropped me the news that Calexico has finished recording a new album and set a release day for Sept. 9.

"Carried to Dust" will be the band's fifth proper LP, but that doesn't come close to capturing the amazing array of recorded material that's come from Joey Burns and John Convertino. Add to that total two proper EPs, an iTunes-only live EP, an EP-worth of bonus downloads from their last album, six tour-only albums of mostly instrumental or live music, a live DVD and a tremendous collaboration with Iron & Wine.

Oh, and not to mention the five Calexico collaborations on the I'm Not There Soundtrack, their work with Giant Sand and the Friends of Dean Martinez and backing music on albums by Richard Buckner, Neko Case and Victoria Williams. If that wasn't enough, the band has made six full concerts available for free at archive.org, any one of which would make a fine live album.

The new record features Sam Beam from Iron & Wine, Douglas McCombs of Tortoise and singer-songwriter Pieta Brown, who brings here own connections to the Tucson music scene.

On the band's Touch & Go Records page, Burns says the new record is:

"at least partially, the story of a writer in Los Angeles around the time of the writers’ strike we had a while back in late 2007. Our hopper heads out east on a whim and a dry Santa Ana tail wind. Stopping at the Yucca Valley swap meet he buys an old road map with a route already marked with red pen. It leads him to a cabin and from the cabin to a chain of other small town thrift stores, picking up old copies of National Geographic magazines along the way. Stories about snow drops in Moscow, leaning houses in Valparaiso, abandoned neighborhoods in New Orleans, and a manmade lake full of cell phone trees creep their way into his notes. He finds further inpiración at old roadside diners, bending an ear to each waitress and the local news over badly brewed coffee. The break proves to be enlightening. He falls in love with the newly found space and being carried along spontaneity's spark.”

That sounds like a traveling record, one full of introspection and odd encounters. And the reference to space and spontaneity's spark might just serve as one of the better descriptions of Calexico's music in general.

Burns & Convertino introduced two new songs at their Rialto show last month that sounded sparse and haunting in their two-man arrangements. They later introduced another one with a shortened version of Burns' description, called "Writer's Minor Holiday." And lo and behold, some thoughtful soul captured it, YouTube style:



Another new song that was introduced at Calexico's December KXCI benefit show, "Absent Afternoon," doesn't appear on the track list for "Carried to Dust," but here's a video from TucsonScene:


"Carried to Dust" track list:

1. Victor Jara's Hands
2. Two Silver Trees
3. The News About William
4. Sarabande In Pencil Form
5. Writer's Minor Holiday
6. Man Made Lake
7. Inspiración
8. House of Valparaiso
9. Slowness
10. Bend To The Road
11. El Gatillo (Trigger Revisited)
12. Fractured Air (Tornado Watch)
13. Falling From Sleeves
14. Red Blooms
15. Contention City

DOWNLOAD:
Calexico - Sunken Waltz (live Studio 2A, KXCI, 10-15-2002)
Get the whole set as a zip file.

Bo Diddley, R.I.P.

The intro to the New York Times story says it all: "The singer and guitarist invented his own name, his own guitars, his own beat and, with a handful of other musical pioneers, rock ’n’ roll itself."

Listening to some of his tunes today, it's striking how fresh they sound. It really must've blown minds to hear those songs in the 1950s. It's not just that those songs are the foundation of a whole new type of music, that their very existence marked the creation of "rock 'n' roll." Bo Diddley's songs are tough as nails no matter, and that would be true no matter when they were written. So give him all the props in the world as a guitarist and an innovator, but don't get caught looking past the fact that Bo Diddley was an absolutely amazing songwriter. He stretched the blues into a whole new art form and it wasn't something he accomplished with his beat and boxy guitar alone.

I can't claim to be a Bo Diddley expert - reading through the different obituaries, it's almost all new to me, and fascinating too, especially that his first band was the Langley Avenue Jive Cats - but I absolutely dig "Who Do You Love." It's one of the greatest rock songs of all time, one of those standards that is never going to get old, no matter how often it's performed.

I first heard of Bo Diddley through the Bo Jackson commercials when I was a kid, and I'm sure that's pretty common for people under 30 or so. And while that bit of pop culture is long gone, it did put a legendary rock and blues icon back in the spotlight.



His death is sad news, but hopefully it brings with it the reflection and resurgence in people's interest that accompanied the passing of Johnny Cash and Ray Charles. An Oscar-winning biopic is probably already in the works. I'll be there.

DOWNLOAD:
Bo Diddley - Who Do You Love
Ronnie Hawkins & The Band - Who Do You Love
Townes Van Zandt - Who Do You Love
Robyn Hitchcock - Who Do You Love
North Mississippi All-Stars - Who Do You Love
Patti Smith - Who Do You Love

Chango Malo's acoustic farewell to Don Jennings

When the revered and dedicated host of the best local radio show ever makes a special request for his final show, it's a simple one to grant

So no matter that a thundering, calamitous rock band has never played an acoustic show before, the wish must be granted. After all, what could be a more fitting conclusion to Don Jennings' 10 years hosting KXCI's Locals Only than a one-of-a-kind send off from Chango Malo. And despite the fact that the impetus for the show just might have come from the combination of a joke and a drunken boast, the band is fine-tuning a set that promises to be one for the ages.

"I was wasted and Don came up to me and asked when the Chango Malo acoustic set was going to be ready," says drummer Jericho Davidson. "I got all offended and said that contrary to popular belief we all know how to play our instruments and we can do an acoustic set anytime."

Sax player David Clark jokes that it was "entrapment," but the band has nothing but praise for Jennings and his whole-hearted support of local music, and they remember the first time the dean of Tucson's music scene caught them play: during a Club Crawl set in the basement of the defunct Double Zero on Congress Street.

"There's going to be nobody like him again," says bassist Justin Lillie. "He's a pillar. He's part of the foundation," says singer Quin Davis. Guitarist Tom Beach says Jennings is as important as anybody to the Tucson music scene. Guitarist Ian Philabaum has a more personal take. "Don Jennings means to me waking up in the back of Tape Worm's truck one early Sunday morning and not knowing where I was. Me and Don slept in the back of a truck together one time and from then on it was magic. I've been with the quintessential man."

They've been guests on Locals Only four times, and don't mince words when talking about how important Jennings has been to Chango Malo and dozens and dozens of other Tucson bands. "There's no other show like that in Tucson. For him to be so down with the whole scene, he's just like a best friend," Clark says.

Jennings was also instrumental in helping Chango Malo to get the Stunning Tonto record label off the ground. During those days, Jennings bonded with fellow Stunning Tonto champion and "investor" Matt Moore, the best friend Chango Malo ever had. Moore died (five years ago today, in fact) at Club Congress after he collapsed at the end of a Chango Malo show.

Jennings dedicated a Locals Only to Moore, a show Lillie calls the most emotional he's ever heard. Chango Malo also played a memorial show for Moore, donating the money to the Humane Borders group their friend supported so deeply. At the show, Chango Malo performed "Redemption Song," Moore's favorite. They pledged never to touch the song again, but that performance was among the most dynamic and emotive I've ever seen, with Clark handling the opening lines on saxophone and the whole crowd singing and swaying, most in tears, as the song built and built until it was shouted to the heavens.

"That was one of the most magical moments ever on stage," Lillie says. And with the acoustic show, especially the surprise covers, the band is trying to capture that same spirit. "It's fun because we're putting the same energy into it that we did for our Cover Up sets and the Abbey Road show. We just felt so honored that he wanted us to do his final show."

Talking Friday night in their practice space just south of downtown, the Chango Malo boys clearly know that they're putting together the show specifically for Jennings, and that he deserves it. "I just want it to come across awesome on the recording, so Don gets his wish," Philabaum says.

For Chango Malo, acoustic doesn't mean mellow or slow. Don't expect brushed drums or hushed vocals. "You see a lot of bands playing their songs exactly the same, but with acoustic guitars and that's just boring. So we reworked our songs, we added new parts," says Davidson, who nods to the old bridal adage in describing the set list as "old, new and borrowed."

Chango Malo is a rowdy band by their very nature, but also one that likes to throw a good curveball. And they have the creativity and the versatility to pull it off. The band has performed cover sets of material by Stevie Wonder, Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, the Temptations and David Bowie, and triumphed with a New Year's Eve show by playing Abbey Road from start to finish.

The band's sound has always been a challenge to describe. It's definitely rock 'n' roll, but there are elements of soul, funk and hardcore throughout, all contributing to an unmistakable presence for the band, which can turn from melodic to heavy and back, smoothly guiding those stylistic shifts. More telling than any of the cobbled-together genre-hybrids that the band has never liked is the unrestrained joy that hit them when they got to open up for their heroes, Fishbone. On stage the band is pure energy, a rapturous thunder that wails and crashes. They bounce around the stage, in thrall with that glorious noise they're creating.

Not only does the band bring the same energy and passion to this acoustic take on their material, but the songs emerge in their acoustic versions fully-formed, modified rather than stripped down. Clark brought in an accordion for some parts, and horns have a greater presence. With the new arrangements, the songs fall together differently. Each instrument's role becomes slightly different. Some songs have a more soulful tinge, others adopt a sort of countrified shuffle.

"We wanted to make it more elaborate and get more people involved. And Don's so involved in the whole scene, everyone we talked to is totally down," Davidson said.

Those eager guest musicians include British bluesman Tom Walbank on harmonica and horns from The Jons' Javier "Escubi" Gamez and Jon Villa, who sat in with Chango Malo for a soaring rendition of "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" in a cover-up set of the Temptations.

The show is Sunday, June 1 at Club Congress, with an early 7 p.m. start. The performance is being recorded and will be broadcast during Jennings' last Locals Only broadcast, on June 9 at 8 p.m. (It's at 91.3 FM in Tucson and available streaming at kxci.org) And the band will turn the tables on the host, interviewing Jennings about his 10 years hosting the program, and the countless bands he's helped out along the way.

DOWNLOAD:
Chango Malo - Superstition (Stevie Wonder cover)

Get the whole set, from the 2001 Cover Up, as a zip file.

For Manchester

I've updated the link for Arlo's 1966 proto-recording of Alice's Restaurant.

For more on Arlo, click here. And since I hadn't mentioned it before, it must be said now: I got to meet Arlo about a month ago and it was one of the pleasures of my life.

New Wolf Parade single

SubPop has posted a second Wolf Parade song for download in advance of the Montreal band's forthcoming new record, At Mount Zoomer.

For my money, "Language City" is easily as good as anything on their debut record, Apologies to the Queen Mary. The new album is out June 17, and just over a month later, the band hits the Rialto Theatre in Tucson. (And who knows what some blokes from the frozen north are gonna think of the blistering desert summer. Hopefully we'll have the rains by then.)

"Language City" sounds like a slight departure from the Modest Mouseyness of their Isaac Brock produced debut. It's a zippy song, built around a straightforward piano groove and some shimmering guitar. It's the perfect type of song for a single - catchy enough to burrow into your head and complex enough to reward many, many listens.

Along with the new Portishead, Old 97's Billy Bragg records, At Mount Zoomer one of the ones I'm looking forward to most this year. And catching a band on tour riding a freshly released disc definitely makes for a promising show.

DOWNLOAD:
Wolf Parade - Language City
Wolf Parade - Call It A Ritual

Also, Captain's Dead has a whole live show.

External Recap

As convenient and indicative of our technological age as it is, there's also a certain sort of erieness in being able to search around youtube for a few minutes and arrive at a fairly decent representation of my weekend.

First up is from the Calexico show on Friday. I briefly mentioned in another post that the band welcomed roughly 30 mariachi players onto the stage (two bands - one a bunch of high schoolers having what I am sure was the time of their lives while earning money for a trip to D.C. and the other Calexico's regular partners, Luz de Luna) for the finale, which included Neil Young's "Heart of Gold." Well, here it is, courtesy of someone recording from the balcony:



And from TucsonScene.Com, here's a performance from December of Dylan's "Goin' to Acapulco," which Calexico performs with Jim James on the I'm Not There Soundtrack, and briefly in the film. The Calexico boys have truly made this song, as well as "Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)," their own, which is a dual testament to their musicianship as well as Dylan's incredible songwriting.



Up next is Monday. Sport's On Congress took full advantage of the three-day weekend, having locals Garboski and The Swim play, along with Riddle of Steel from St. Louis.
Check out The Swim playing "Julie," from their March CD release show for Random Walk:



For more on The Swim, check out my interview with the band.

DOWNLOAD:
The Swim - Lazy Day

Mixes, Part 2

At this point, I've recreated all but a couple of my old mixes in the new iTunes library - and those two are all but done, just missing a few tracks that somehow I've found I don't actually own anywhere else after all these years. The "Mix Master" playlist that I'm using to string them all together is just shy of 500 songs, forming one hell of a 30-hour playlist. On my birthday several years ago I tried to listen to all the mixes, from start to finish, and though I didn't come close it was the perfect soundtrack for that day of BBQ and friends.

It fascinates me now to take a look through the whole shebang and see what trends emerge. With so many mixes (and the wonderfully searchable iTunes software) I can take a broad assessment of my whole mix-making world, and see which artists or bands or albums have turned up the most over the years.

As far as artists goes, Dylan and Springsteen run away with the crown, partly because for quite a while I made it an explicit policy to put one track from each on every mix, and partly because even without such a policy the same damn thing probably would've happened. Bob Dylan has been left off only three mixes, but each of those had somebody doing a Dylan cover. Bruce has been slightly less prevalent, but each time I leave him off a mix it doesn't feel right. Jeff Tweedy ranks next, combining Wilco songs with his solo recordings and contributions to Uncle Tupelo and Golden Smog projects.

Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot has placed three songs on mixes, and another one from an officially unreleased collection of demos pushes it to the forefront. This Desert Life from Counting Crows also accounts for three songs, which kinda surprised me at first until I looked and remembered those are the only tunes I even like on that album. Okkervil River's Overboard and Down EP has the best percentage, landing two of its five songs on mixes. Numerous albums have supplied two songs for various mixes, and I think my several-decades-late approach to Dylan makes it easy to understand that various volumes of his Bootleg Series are represented in five songs over the course of my mixes, rather than the original versions of the songs.

What I've long counted as my four favorite albums of all time - Blood on the Tracks, Born to Run, Ruby Vroom and Anodyne - only come in at two, one, one and two songs. And there's an interesting point in that - great albums actually make it very difficult for me to chose one favorite, or even one representative song. I'll take a cop out any time, picking some live song from somewhere else or even turning away from a band all together if I can't make up my mind.

It's also interesting from this perspective to see at which point in time any particular bands showed up. Some that are my absolute favorites now had a slow arrival. On the other hand, some bands or songs that I've come to rely on through the years show up surprisingly early. I was turned onto Morphine from practically the very beginning, something that didn't really happen too often with me in those days. I took quite a while to progress into soul and hip-hop. And local artists started showing up frequently once I started going out to seem more shows. Live songs have been a strong component in the last couple years as the Internet has made bootlegs easy to find and bands have realized that an open taping policy only leads to more fans.

The song stretch from Billy "The Kid" Emmerson's "Every Woman I Know (Crazy 'Bout An Automobile)" from 1955 clear through to several 2008 songs. Each year since 1962 is represented by at least one song somewhere along the line, which I hadn't known until writing this post. Songs from this decade make up about a third of the total, and the 1990s account for slightly fewer songs. I have put some effort toward balancing older and newer songs, to give the new-to-me their space alongside the purely new.

The overall process has stayed pretty much the same since the first couple mixes. It starts with a notebook, and over the course of a few months I'll jot down the songs as they come to mind. The first few are always totally obvious and kinda come all at once. There's just no doubt that those particular handfulls of songs are really the defining ones of each time period. The list grows and eventually I reckon it's time to start putting it together. Finishing it always includes cutting at least a few, and struggling to choose between a few songs for at least one band on the list. Then comes ordering, and finally naming. I linger over all that for a couple days, just to make sure the picks are right.

As I've been putting all this together, I've started thinking of another mix that I ought to develop: The Considered. This one would include all the songs that I've barely left off mixes - those should've beens and also-rans. I have no doubt that in hindsight many of them are far better than ones that I put on to begin with. I also don't doubt that many of them are garbage that I rightly turned away from when it really mattered. But I reckon curiosity is going to win out here and soon I'll be digging through old notebooks in search of bands or songs that were crossed out somewhere in the process. I'll bring new life to my 22nd and 23rd song of any sixth month period. Who knows what that'll bring? I'm also going back to the original cassettes of the early mixes and bring back whatever songs I had to chop off when I converted the 90-minute tapes to 80-minute CDs. And finally, I think I'm going to start reconstructing the various mixes people have made for me over the years, and string all those together in their own Mix Master playlist. Shuffle on.

And in case you missed the latest, download Howling Moon as a zip file.

DOWNLOAD:
The Drakes - Later On
Goshen - Believe It's True
Little Rooms - Peanut
Lost Armada - All Light Exchanged For Sight
The Seychelles - 13 hundred songs, three and a half days
Tricky Luz - Trace
Rainer - Last Fair Deal (live Robert Johnson Cover)

Far out and pretty cool

Here's one spacecraft orbiting Mars taking a photo of another spacecraft as it parachutes to the surface. Downright incredible.

And here's one of the first pictures taken from the lander craft, looking out over the Martian polar plains.

Find more images at the Mars Phoenix Lander site.

DOWNLOAD:
Seu Jorge - Life On Mars (David Bowie cover)

Memorial Day

The best post I've read today is over at Echoes In The Wind, which emphasizes just how little has changed since the last Memorial Day. He's got a baker's dozen of great songs and some nice sentiments on the day.

The only thing I have to add is that I'm thankful that all the family and friends I have who have been in the service over the years returned home safe and have had the good fortune to live their lives. For those who didn't return, may they always be remembered. And may wisdom actually prevail the next time some president wants to start a war.

DOWNLOAD:
Bob Dylan - John Brown
Bruce Springsteen - Mrs. McGrath (live)
R.E.M. & Billy Bragg - My Youngest Son Came Home Today (live)

(I'll be back tomorrow with part 2 of the post on Mixes)

Mixes: Part 1

One of the first things I had in mind to do once I got the new Macbook and began the long-awaited Complete Digital Revolution was to re-create all of my old mixes as playlists, to bring these treasured artifacts of my music fandom along with me into the next realm.

I'd say that nearly half of these mixes began on cassette tape (later transferred to CD), and only the last few existed just digitally, outside of the realm of CD. I say that to note the time period that this covers, basically dating back to my freshman year of college. The mixes (I hesitate to label them 'official' in any way, though I kinda think of them in that sense) have followed a fairly straight pattern through the years - one in the summer and one in the winter - though it hasn't been entirely precise.

I finished the first one right before Spring Break; it was to be driving music for Tony's truck as we headed back up north. The opening track was David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel," a song that to this day gets my blood pumping because (and this is the reason it not only shows up, but also kicks off the mix) it was at the center of my friend Mitch's Friday night music and it seems as if "Rebel Rebel" accompanied us to every party his Mazda took us to that year. I don't know that we ever really paid too close attention to the lyrics - we simply got from it what we needed. It was about posturing, about being Rebels, about cruising to a party on a Friday night, with all the badness and possibility that suggested.

That first mix was called "A Bit More Immortality," which started my habit of giving careful thought to selecting (hopefully) good titles, even if they did occasionally pass way into the realm of pretension ("Discovery and the Prophetic Sky" - I cringe at that one). More importantly, the titles definitely meant something. I searched for those right words that related to or defined the same time period those 20 or so songs did. In that case, the words came almost directly out of an email my cousin sent me: "Sometimes life makes you feel immortal. Sometimes life makes you want to curl up and die. I guess I could use some more immortality." When you're 18, you think like that. (A side note: those emails my cousin John and I sent in those years defied all conventions of what emails have become. We wrote. It was nothing for either of us to sit down at the computer for three hours and fire off an email longer than any paper we'd write during the course of a semester. I miss those days, mostly because I miss having that much to say at any given time.)

I think it's important to acknowledge that I'm recreating these mixes as much for a sense of continuity as for the tunes themselves. While I've always loved putting together just the right tunes and crafting mind-blowing transitions in the process, I'm still fascinated in general by the incredible way I can make a kind of personal statement about a period of time just by stringing together what music I was listening to most. It's fascinating as well how that spirit never dies, how that same statement reflects itself 10 years on down the line.

And it's in that spirit that I still warmly embrace some of the songs that are, shall we say, a little bit more difficult to listen to now. I have no problem hanging onto the somewhat conflicting notions that a particular song now makes me cringe and at the same time brings me a rush of youthful emotion. My second solid mix, the somewhat out-of-rhythm summer compilation "Northern Arizona Skies," has its strengths, but also contains the following songs, in order: Eric Clapton's "Wonderful Tonight," The Eagles' "Peaceful Easy Feeling," and Bob Seger's "Against the Wind." Thankfully I followed up with the definitely respectable "Let It Be" and then a song from the first bootleg album I ever bought, Dylan singing "The Times They Are A-Changin'" accompanied on piano, from a collection of his publishing demos. (Not only is that a fantastic version, but the song itself formed the core of a freshman year paper that was returned with the comment that I had a "gift for clear, elegant prose." Sweet.)

Not every mix is created the same, and even if for each one I've had a roughly six-month period of time with which to pull together 80 or 90 minutes of music, the results have varied wildly. The mix that followed that clunky "Northern Arizona Skies" was one I still rank in the top tier of the 22 I've put together so far. The name "Eighth Street Symphony" simply came from the fact that I lived on Eighth Street, but I loved it. From New Order's "Regret" to Zeppelin's "Over the Hills and Far Away," it's great song after great song, straight through. I was living in what was practically a lunatic asylum with two best friends, just off campus in a dump of a house that we never saw as such. We had freedom and space and a 60-disc changer ran through a high-powered receiver and four speakers that wrapped the living room in pure volume. The songs came from friends and parties and my own discoveries as I dug into the country-rock scene of the mid 1990s.

This was also the first mix directly influenced by particular bands I'd seen perform live, which has since become probably the most fundamental way of picking which band or song shows up on a mix. In that instance it was the Son Volt show I'd caught at the end of that October, as well as the Pearl Jam show from the previous summer, and the Social Distortion and Superchunk songs that I'd come to love from live performances.

(Since this is getting way too long, I'm gonna leave y'all with some songs from the mixes that I doubt you'd be able to find anywhere else, and then come back tomorrow with the conclusion.)

DOWNLOAD:
Bob Dylan - The Times They Are A-Changin' (demo)
Bueno - Paralyzed
Fourkiller Flats - Cat Song
The Hollowbodies - Kodo And The Queensbound R

Mars landing day

After nine months of travel (across 422 million miles), the Mars Phoenix lander probe is set to touch down today on the Red Planet.

And since the entire mission is being led by scientists right here in Tucson, I reckoned I'd go on down to campus and check out the whole thing live as it happens (on NASA TV, of course).

I'm excited to experience the "will it land or will it crash?" tension that will envelope the entire seven minutes of the craft's descent through the atmosphere and dramatic slowing via rocket thrust. As the scientists themselves say, landing a spaceship on Mars is not easy. (The last successful landing of this nature, using rockets to slow descent, was accomplished on the first Mars probes, the Viking landers in 1976, just seven years after man arrived at the much closer moon.)

Anyway, it should be an interesting afternoon. And for your pleasure, here are a couple Space songs, one from our local greats Calexico, who I saw tear down the roof Friday night, when they brought out about 30 mariachi players for a stunning take on Neil Young's "Heart of Gold."

DOWNLOAD:
Calexico - Lost in Space (live)
Luna - Lost in Space (live)

Greetings from S.F.!

(Photo from the San Francisco Chronicle. More here.)

Howdy everybody. What a time indeed out here in San Francisco! Great friends, great weather and yesterday I got to participate in one of the strangest events on the planet, the annual Bay To Breakers, "a party disguised as a footrace" as it was described by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Outlandish costumes were the rule for the more than 60,000 folks who wound their way through the heart of the city. Some ran it in all seriousness; the vast majority turned out simply for the festiveness of the damn thing.

Freaktown and I went as the Dude, if the Dude were going jazzercizing, sipping Caucasians along the way. Not too bad, and I was surprised we saw no other Dudes along the way. There were at least four Viking ships, tons of pirates, an elaborate 1970s disco group, at least two groups representing Team Zissou, several Never Nudes and all manner of other nonsense, including, as I was warned, a sizable contingent of folks who decided not to costume at all.

Other than that, I've been sharing and talking music with my wonderful hosts and other friends. Reminiscences of my last visit and the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, another free and uplifting gathering of tens and tens of thousands of people, have been great, and we've been listening to several of those performances, especially Jeff Tweedy and Emmylou Harris. And don't look now, but Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2008 is around the corner and even few acts already announced are very impressive. I'll be back - S.F. is already a second home.

So that's the quick update. I'm now back to vacationing.

DOWNLOAD:
Jeff Tweedy - Pecan Pie (live, Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival 2007)
And check out the whole show at Owl and Bear's amazing Wilco archive.

Howling Moon

Hey everybody.
I'll be offline for a few days visiting friends and enjoying the best weather of the year in the San Francisco Bay area. Plans are light, but Bay to Breakers is gonna be the centerpiece of the weekend. Other than that, it'll be sun, relaxation, laughs and good friends. Perhaps I'll squeeze a post in, but don't bet on it.

However, lest I disappoint, I'm glad to announce that I've completed the latest mix, another in the ongoing biannual series that dates back now more than a decade. This one may have been the hardest one yet to put together, in terms of narrowing down a lengthy list to the final selections. There's no doubt I listen to far more music than ever, and seek further and further to find things that are new and interesting and full of passion and excellence.

The title for this time around is "Howling Moon," a phrase that I just recently stumbled upon, built from some imagery in some poems I wrote years ago. I like the butting heads, as it is, of the wild and the pristine; at least that's how the words seem to echo in my head.

This one seems to have less rock and soul than the last couple mixes, leaning more toward folk music and live performances. There's still an amazing variety, but for an overall feel, this one comes across as a bit mellow. Ah, but what fantastic songs they are!

So, enjoy, and write if anything particularly strikes you. And I'll be back late next week.

HOWLING MOON:

SumKid - September
The Swim - Margaret With Comets
Capstan Shafts - 61 Sideburns
Golden Boots - Days Are Night
The Helio Sequence - Lately
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks - Gardenia
Dean & Britta - You Turn My Head Around (live)
Gillian Welch - Black Star (live)
The Mason Brothers - Into the Canyon
Tom Russell - Tonight We Ride
Sam Cooke - Another Saturday Night
Greyhound Soul - Rainer (live)
Greg Brown - Canned Goods (live)
Arlo Guthrie - Highway in the Wind (live)
Elliott Smith - Whatever (Folk Song in C)
Ezra Furman & The Harpoons - Hotel Room in Casablanca
Felice Brothers - Frankie's Gun
Bob Dylan - Let Me Die In My Footsteps
John Prine & Bonnie Raitt - Angel From Montgomery
Townes Van Zandt - Tower Song (live)
Bill Monroe - I Saw The Light
Suicide Kings - Hooker's Lament

DOWNLOAD:
Howling Moon as a .zip file
(included is an .xml file, import that through iTunes and you'll have the playlist automatically in order. Sweet!)
Bonus: Iron & Wine - Resurrection Fern (live) -- which is the last song cut from the mix.

And go check out the last few mixes, from Burma Shake & Shimmy and on back, all the way to Momentary Fires.

The Hold Steady touring

The Hold Steady are taking their new record out on tour and are stopping in Tucson for a gig at the Rialto on Aug. 2. (The Rialto has nothing online about the show yet, but it's in the theater's print ad, and the Hold Steady has all the dates online).

I've caught the band on their last two trips to Tucson - first at Club Congress and then at Plush - and also lucked out to see them in Philadelphia in October. And on stage they're intensely entertaining - it's definitely a jump up and down and shout the chorus type of a show.

The band's new record is out on July 15, but we get to try out the first single next Tuesday.

DOWNLOAD:
The Hold Steady - Stuck Between Stations (acoustic)
A whole set and interview from KEXP.